The darker side of online gaming

By Lyndonimus
24th May 04

Well, after having a mate round for a solid 24 hour network gaming experience I had a thought, in fact many.

After the many years we've known each other we've been through a lot. Yeap this starts from the time when 200mb was good for HD space and you didn't need to worry about RAM.
Well I was 11 or 12 had got my first CD-ROM drive, 4-speed as well [woah!] and my mate... for the sake of privacy I'll call him... uhhh John. [well either that or Mr.X]... Well my mate had just signed up to the Internet. Wow! How cool was this, well I was soon to follow with my 36.6kbps Winmodem.

Well what could I say, the net wasn't as great as I had imagined, but cool cos me and 'John' would meet up in V-net chat.
Well this was the begining. After the freshly released FFVII 'John' had found a chat room called Midgar. Could this be heaven? This was what the net was made for!

Well after our online chatting with other fans [where I subsequently met Huxley 5 years ago!]. Yeap this was the net for me. Fun and quite expensive at local rate calls! So soon came the games, first up on the Agenda was Diablo. This was a great game where me and 'John' would direct link through the phone line. It was great fun, hehe in fact we still reminisce about our first killing of 'The Butcher'. Diablo fans should know this boss. ^^v.

So we were hooked. Lured in young virgins we were ripe to be taken advantage of. From then on our library increased. Hours of one on one Total Anihilation, C&C. Then we moved onto B-net. Home of the junkies, formed our own clan 'The Dark Council' and hey life couldn't be sweeter.

All we need now was free net access. So years passed and BT started with 0800 numbers. Now its quite amazing the people we met on V-net. Yeap many hackers who stole paid accounts and handed them out to us. Hey this was IT! Free 24/7 gaming.

Now gradualy we got ICQ, an internet essential for keeping in touch out side V-net chat rooms. Now we were no longer virgins we were veterans, or whores if you prefere. The net was our home inside our home. This is where we roamed free.

Years pass contacts came and went. Some remained, but not many I might add... I have about 5 contacts I've known on the net throughout my time.

A new game hits the block after our rampage on Kingpin and Unreal Tournament.
Diablo 2 had surfaced, as well as my OWN BT account, heh you have no idea how symbollic this is of coming of age. I unfourtunately never purchased this game. 'John' however did. During our A levels this game had plagued him. If the net was tobacco Diablo was crack. Instantly addictive and hard to shake off. Needless to say after he dropped out of college, I rarely saw 'John' for a good year. Maybe more. Well this game made 'John' upgrade his comp, buy 256Mb RAM, and even sign up to ADSL [after his dad removed the phone line due to high bills] to reduce changes of 'lag death'.
Now if you arn't familiar with the schematics of Diablo 2, let me brief you:
In hardcore mode, you have one life, and one life only. Try and get the highest level on the ladder without dying. Simple as that. But in reality this evil addiction, in my view cost 'John' his education. Staying up till 8am 'levelling' and only leaving his house to collect his dole cheque.

Well here we are six or seven years later and none the wiser [well, I'm still here arn't I?]. I look at my ICQ list [which at one point numbered over 120] my MSN list and my AIM list. 'John' is free from Diablo at this time. If only due to the fact that BT cut off his ADSL for not paying a 300£+ bill. It was odd... seeing him, so clueless about stuff.
FFIX is out? He asked.
Well after re-educating him in today he still craves the net, in fact he wants to get a job to pay off his bill. Well I don't blame him. I'm just as bad, not a day goes by without me logging on at least once, if only to check my mail. I was lucky enough to not quit everything for the net 24/7 but I'm not so much better off. I only slightly made it to uni.

So maybe he'll never be free of the net.
This is the side of online gaming that we don't often see, so Doom aparently made students kill each other. What about the games that make us defeat ourselves?

But hey its 3am, I'm off for some Counter-Strike.

-- Lyndonimus 24th May 04